Called Pre-Bid by Moat, it scans for brand safety, viewability and invalid traffic before a web ad is bid on programmatic platforms.

In April, Oracle bought Grapeshot, which scans web pages for ad-oriented brand safety. In April of last year, it bought ad verification and measurement service Moat.

On Tuesday, Oracle Data Cloud announced Pre-Bid by Moat, which assesses inventory for viewability and invalid traffic before an ad is programmatically bid. The new solution will be made available as part of the existing Grapeshot pre-bid brand safety filtering, through an integration with such demand-side platforms (DSPs) as Adobe Advertising Cloud, Amobee, dataxu, MediaMath and The Trade Desk.

Pre-bid on programmatic platforms. Since their acquisitions, both Grapeshot and Moat capabilities have been available through the Data Cloud. But, Head of Product Mark Kopera said, this is the first time Moat’s scanning for invalid traffic and viewability is available before the bid is made on programmatic platforms. Previously, this service was available at the time of page loading for non-programmatic environments, when it could prevent an ad from being served, or after purchase in programmatic settings.

Now, if Moat or Grapeshot detect issues pre-bid, no bid will be placed.

Utilizing other Oracle data. While many other solutions exist in the marketplace to scan for invalid traffic and lack of viewability, Kopera pointed to the availability of other Oracle datasets as helping Moat’s accuracy. These datasets, he said, include abnormal traffic patterns in Dyn, the web security and DNS provider Oracle acquired in 2016, or offline purchase patterns driven by ads on specific web inventory, which indicate ads placed there are seen by humans.

Kopera also noted that Grapeshot analyzes the entire content of a web page, which he compared to other brand safety providers that focus only on URL-level metadata like page title, keywords and so on.

Why this matters to marketers. Although Kopera said Oracle doesn’t yet have data on how effective this new Moat/Grapeshot solution is, Moat’s own data shows that about a third of ads are not seen at all by humans because of viewability and invalid traffic. And placing ads on pages that don’t diminish a brand’s reputation remains a major headache for digital advertisers.

By making this solution available prior to an ad bid, Oracle Data Cloud’s offering to DSPs means that — when red flags pop up — the spend never occurs. In addition to potentially making ads more effective, it could make marketers lives easier, because they don’t have to chase make-goods after the ad spend has already occurred or after the ad has been delivered.

This story first appeared on MarTech Today. For more on marketing technology, click here.

About The Author

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.